AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He reached up to his throat, seeking a pulse he wouldn’t find.
“Geneviève . . .?”
“You’re dead.” I felt tears start to fall. “I can either behead you or call Beatrice.”
“Like Jimmy Odem,” Tres murmured. “You saved me.”
I shook my head, swallowed hard, but my voice was still shaky. “You’redead.”
“I feel fine. Fabulous actually.” Tres grinned. “You are a goddess, Geneviève. My goddess. Anything you need. Anything I can do to make you happy. Any . . .”
His expression shifted, and in the next instant, he was kneeling at my feet. He looked up at me, and the sheer raw lust in his gaze was a frightening thing.
“Let me please you, mistress,” he whispered. “I am yours to command.”
“Whoa.” I stumbled backwards and jerked the door open and ran.
It might not have been the bravest moment of my life, but I was at my wit’s end. I went directly to the kitchen, grabbed Eli’s hand, and continued right out the front door.
“Beatrice!” I yelled as loud as I could.
Beatrice!I repeated in whatever internal thought-speak I had.
“Beatrice, please,” I said again. “I need you.”
And then I let myself be drawn into Eli’s embrace again. He murmured words I didn’t understand in a language I didn’t know, and I rested my head against him. That’s how we were still standing a few moments later when Beatrice arrived.
“Geneviève.”
I stayed in Eli’s embrace, but turned so I was facing Beatrice. Instead of something Victorian, this time she was wearing a burgundy medieval-looking gown and fur capelet. Instead of seeming regal, she appeared more like a warrior.
“You are still alive,” she said in greeting.
“And you’re still dead.” I smiled, though, despite my innate animosity toward her. She’d helped me twice now, once with Odem and once with the venom Alice had injected into me. Softer, I added, “Thank you.”
She nodded.
“I have information and a problem,” I said levelly. Then I looked at her and offered, “You can have the memories of the injections.”
Beatrice smoothed down the sleeves of her medieval-looking gown.
“Are you testing to see if your skill is of your mother or father’s line?” she asked in that almost-laughing voice of hers.
I borrowed Eli’s half-shrug in lieu of an answer.
Beatrice leaned close enough that I felt Eli tense behind me. She whispered, “But if I am of both lines, the question is unanswered.”
Before I could reply or puzzle out what that meant, she was in my mind. I felt her there, an already familiar presence, as she sought the information on the source of thedraugrvenom, the injections, and my reason for calling her again.
A scant few moments later, she touched my face with icy hands. “You have done well. I will send your payment.” She kissed my forehead. “Shall I kill the widow? Or do you want the honor?”
I blinked at her. “I don’t know who hired Lydia. She’d dead. Alice is . . . not culpable.”
Beatrice laughed. “You are tender-hearted.”
“I am not.” I scowled. After a brief pause, I asked, “Could you take Tres, like with Odem?”
“No.”
