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“I packed everything I could think of, and every bottle of holy water we have in stock,” she said. “I figure if we are dealing with a fire spirit, it couldn't hurt.”
The cab pulled up just as I slammed the café’s front door closed. Thankfully, Émigré wasn’t that far away and it didn't take long to get there. Security hustled us straight in without asking any questions.
Maelle was waiting in the main room, but Roger was nowhere to be seen. She was wearing a deep blue aviator outfit this evening, and her hair had been swept up into a tightly bound topknot. Her appearance was as immaculate as ever, and yet there was something less than controlled emanating from her. Something that could, at any moment, unravel and create chaos.
That something was the vampire.
Someone—something—was hunting in her territory, and she was not pleased.
“We've done a circuit of this entire area, but I cannot feel anything untoward.”
“We may not find anything either,” I admitted. “But it's always better to be safe than sorry.”
“Indeed,” she agreed evenly. “What do you wish to do?”
I hesitated, and briefly scanned the room. The club only opened at sunset, but it was already half-full. There were plenty of clubs in Melbourne that didn't get this type of turnout on a Friday or Saturday night let alone a Wednesday. The colorful lights that swept the lower dance floor didn't stay long on any particular face but, even so, my psychic radar remained mute. Whatever I was sensing wasn't currently amongst those on the dance floor.
“I think Belle and I need to do a circuit. If I sense anything, I'll let you know.”
“I’ll be accompanying you,” Maelle said. “I can react against an attack far faster than you can throw a spell.”
The thought of having Maelle at my back sent a chill down my spine. But I wasn't about to admit that, even if—as a vampire—she would have noticed the sudden jump in my pulse rate.
“That's probably not the best idea,” I said carefully. “Please don't take this the wrong way, but your closeness will dilute my ability to sense the evil stalking this venue.”
A small smile touched her lips but didn't do much to lift the coolness from her eyes. “Then I will allow Roger to shadow you. His presence has not affected your skills in the past.”
Because he wasn't a scary old vampire—just the servant of one.
I nodded and glanced at Belle. “Ready?”
“I'll go right, you go left.” She opened the bag and handed me a small bottle of holy water. “Just in case we are dealing with a fire spirit and the damn thing attacks.”
I tucked the bottle into my pocket and, as I resolutely went left, reached out to Belle’s thoughts and lightly linked our minds. This time, it was at a deeper level than our usual telepathic connection. All witches and familiars could mesh thoughts and share energy—in fact, one of the reasons familiars existed was to provide a last-ditch well of energy their witch could draw on in a worst-case scenario. Few witches ever went that far, as it was absolutely possible to drain a familiar to death—and while a witch could survive the loss of their familiar, they were always left far less than they had been.
But the fact that Belle was also a witch meant that we could, under certain circumstances, share abilities as well as energy. While I couldn't use her telepathic skills, we could share others—as we had yesterday, when she'd remotely talked to Alice through me. So while she had no radar for evil, our current connection allowed her to borrow mine.
I walked into the deeper shadows haunting this portion of the main room. The upper tier was divided into two distinct sections—the alien-themed bar lay to the right of the main door, and a series of seating “pods” on the left. Each pod seated between four and twelve guests around a metallic table, and offered some degree of privacy for those who wished it. The only lighting in each one came in the form of tea candles housed in grotesquely shaped lanterns, and while they didn’t throw off a huge amount of light, they did at least provide enough to see the faces of those within.
Not that I actually needed to see anyone. Not when my “radar” was scanning each and every person and almost instantly rejecting them. The thing that had set it off wasn't in any of these booths—it was somewhere up ahead.
And on the move.
Roger appeared out of the gloom, but this time there was no welcoming smile. His expression was as blank as his eyes. He might be physically here, but Maelle was in charge.
“Anything?” Though it was softly said, it carried easily across the pounding beat of the music and the underlying babble of multiple nearby conversations. I rather suspected it was a subtle form of magic, just as his ability to have the crowd part before him was.
“Not yet.”
I stepped around him and continued on. He silently followed, but the weight of his stare had my shoulder blades twitching. Even though there was no threat in that weight, the stirring uneasiness got stronger.
One day, there would be.
I shivered and forced myself to concentrate. The pods became more crowded—and far noisier—the farther around the room and the closer to the bar we got. A strobe of bright light briefly gave me a glimpse of Belle, but someone else almost immediately caught my attention.
She was blonde, statuesque, and absolutely, mind-blowingly stunning. And a man who looked rather star-struck accompanied her.
Our hunter, and her next meal.
