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I gave de Froulay a small, I’m-just-the-hired-help nod. “As you wish.”
De Froulay took my arm. “We’ll be right back,” he told Crow-the-thrall.
He opened the door I’d been guarding and steered me through it. I felt her eyes on me until the door closed behind us.
Damn, damn, damn.
Now I’d have to come up with a reason as to why I’d gone off with the Paris primus. Telling Crow that de Froulay wanted to hire me as a bodyguard wouldn’t cut it. A primus wouldn’t take me aside for such a minor reason; he’d outsource that to his lieutenant or an enforcer like Moreau.
“You’re well?” De Froulay took in my uniform and ponytail. His handsome face looked…concerned.
I put aside my worries about Crow to focus on him. “I’m fine.”
“Good, good.” He hesitated as if he wanted to say more.
I didn’t give him the chance. “I’ll do it,” I blurted.
“Ah, oui?”
“Yes. But not for money. I want a favor instead.”
His dark brows climbed. “A favor.”
Sweat prickled my palms. This was the tricky part. I needed him to say yes. I hadn’t been able to track down my mom’s murderers, not in all these years. I’d begun to think I never would.
“Yes.” I drew a calming breath. “I want you to find the vampires who killed my mom.”
Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. His brows lifted, his jaw slackened. “Vampires killed Charlotte?”
His shock was palpable. Any doubts I’d had about whether he’d been behind her death were laid to rest.
I nodded. “I was there. They wanted me, but she wouldn’t tell them where I was. They tortured her, and she still didn’t tell.” My voice cracked on the last few words.
Guilt choked me. Darkness tugged at me with bony fingers, pulling me down into a muddy swamp of shame and regret.
I should’ve gone back. Fought by her side, even though she’d begged me to run.
I should’ve died with her.
No, I should’ve died instead of her.
De Froulay’s face sharpened. A line of ice-blue encircled his irises and his fangs lengthened into gleaming white daggers.
I stepped back—I might be a trained slayer, but some responses are bred in the bone—and came up against the wall.
“Who?” he demanded in guttural tones.
I blinked. He was really, really angry. Hell, he looked ready to rip someone’s head from their body.
Had my mom mattered to him that much?
“I don’t know,” I said. “But they were French—they talked to each other in French, anyway. I even wondered if you sent them yourself.”
“No. Not me.”
I nodded. Several times, because he was still making me kind of nervous. “I believe that now.”
He released a slow breath. His gaze moved over me, still pressed against the wall. He retracted his fangs. “Calm yourself, little one. I would never harm you.”
