Page 48

And now I’m desperate for a taste.

Out of control, she was glorious.

I can see why my sister was so envious of her. I can also see why the Fire Bird won the fight. If she was in control, I’d be no match for her.

But she isn’t. Miranda saw to that for me.

I click my fingers and the elderly witch shuffles toward me. She’s barely spoken for days and it’s starting to annoy me. As much as I don’t really want her here, she is the closest I’ve got to someone with whom I can have an intelligent conversation.

A Cambridge Unviersity alumni, she is as smart as she is witty.

I know this from the times I visited the museum and watched her interacting with patrons.

When she first arrived, I hoped we might foster some kind of love-hate relationship. Where she came to accept her fate and grew to at least like talking to me.

It seems the students I pick, although intelligent, are just not old enough to deal with their new change of nature. They’re babies. Overtaken by thoughts of blood, and the lust and rage and power that suddenly runs free in their dead black veins.

They give me nothing.

Lucien used to. In the days when we were friends and had cordial conversations over dinner. In the days when the Thornfield family still ruled with an iron fist over Cambridge and its supernatural creatures.

But Lucien and I haven’t been the same ever since that hell damned night in Essex, and now we only see one another when we are forced to come to some kind of agreement over territory or profits.

I shake my head and stoop to pick up a shard of glass. I stare into it, admiring my reflection. Changing the mirrors in the fun house to proper mirrors, two-way mirrors that show people as they truly are not as distorted reflections, was one of the first things I did when I decided to relocate us here.

I am not ashamed to admit that I spend a lot of time here. Alone. With others.

If there’s one perk to being a vampire, it’s the way it makes your skin perfect and your hair glossy and your limbs move with a fluidity humans can only dream of.

Even after one thousand years.

Watching Nova was not the same as watching myself.

She is all imperfections. Mottled thighs, and plumpness, and scars.

The tattoo on her chest is intriguing. As is the scar she hides beneath it.

She is intriguing.

“Bring her to me.” I turn to Miranda and meet her eyes. “It’s time.”

She doesn’t reply, just inclines her head and slopes off like some kind of automaton. When she returns, Nova is beside her, still wrapped in that damn blanket but with Kole’s belt around her waist.

I chuckle and roll my eyes. He wasn’t concerned about her dignity when he was watching her fuck someone else.

I turn to a red-headed vampire whose name I don’t remember and tell her to bring another outfit. Any outfit that will fit and doesn’t look like a bedraggled old sack.

I will not have her dressed like a pauper when I drink from her for the first time.

We are in the throne room. I tell Nova to sit then summon two more of my enclave and instruct them to clean her up.

She doesn’t speak, doesn’t object, just sits down on the throne and allows them to unfurl her from the blanket and wash the mud from her skin.

If I’m going to finally taste the Fire Bird, she is going to be in her most delicious state. No congealed staleness. No earth or soil. And no burns.

“Fix her.” I tell Miranda.

Without hesitation, she kneels in front of Nova and waves her hands over the girl’s body. Her wounds disappear instantly.