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“What kind of business?” I asked, unable to resist probing.
“Syndicate business, and that’s all you need to know.” He rubbed a thumb over my lower lip, sending a lick of heat up my spine. “It’s been a long and tedious week, but Quebec City just got way more interesting.”
“Enough.” I tilted my head to the side. “I know you’re going to let me go.”
“Do you now, Lainey?” He coasted a finger down my throat, his smile slow and dark. “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do. Or should I call you Twilight?”
My gaze snapped to his. Only a handful of other slayers had known my code name, and two of them were dead.
His eyes were jewel-bright in his too handsome face. He released my chin but remained close, crowding me against the bar.
“You’re not the only one with access to information. You shouldn’t have left Montreal like that. When you didn’t show up the next day, I was worried.” His mouth twisted. “I thought something had happened to you, that maybe some other vampire kidnapped you. That idiot Olivier, maybe. He was all over you at Zoe’s ball.”
“Prima Victorine knew I was okay.”
“That occurred to me—so I went to her and asked. Not that with Zoe missing, she gave a fuck about where you were. But she said you were okay, so I went back home. The party was over anyway after Zoe disappeared with Kral.”
He caught a lock of my hair, rubbing it between his thumb and first finger.
“But when I thought it over, I wondered if Victorine had forced you to stay in Canada and become a thrall. I sent Talon and Cain to look for you, but they couldn’t find anything. Zoe was the one who told me you were a slayer, that I should forget about you. But I kept looking—I even hired a human investigator. Because I’m a goddamn fool.”
I bit my lower lip. “No, you’re not.”
He scoffed. “Yeah, I am. A damn, trusting fool. It took months, but the PI came through, including the intel that you’re known as Twilight to your squad.”
“She shouldn’t have been able to—”
“Sweetheart. For enough money, people will tell you just about anything. But no one knew where you were. Until tonight, I wasn’t even sure you were still alive.”
He took my chin in a hard grip. A fiery blue line shimmered to life around his irises.
My heart tripped. He wasn’t just angry, he was furious, despite his outward calm. That thin blue line said he was fighting his vampire.
“So,Twilight. You’re a slayer—or were, anyway. So what are you doing here in Quebec City? And why thehellwere you being auctioned off?”
I tried to hold his gaze but couldn’t. “Fuck off,” I told his chin.
He nudged my chin higher. “Look at me.”
When I obeyed, his gaze locked on my exposed throat.
The sensitive skin tingled. They’d fed from me, every few nights. They hadn’t even granted me the aphrodisiac’s hot rush; they’d wanted me to feel the pain. Fleur herself had drunk my blood just a few hours before the auction—to settle me down, she said. Make me docile.
Brien exhaled, a raw, angry sound. “Who did this?”
He touched the twin marks Fleur had left. The makeup I’d applied to conceal it must’ve worn off. The bitch hadn’t had the decency to lick my throat to heal the punctures.
I jutted my chin to hide my humiliation. “A Quebec City coven.”
“Who?” A muscle jumped in his cheek. His hand moved to my shoulder. “I want names.”
Lemaire and Fleur had tried to compel me not to reveal anything else about them and their coven, and I’d pretended to go along. But through some quirk of genetics, I can’t be compelled. It runs in my family, was what made me valuable to SI.
“I don’t know,” I lied, because what was the point in naming them? It wasn’t Brien’s syndicate.
“Then where did they take you?”
“I don’t know.”
