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“Isn’t it just?”
They sat in silence as the sun crested the horizon like a blob of lava creeping towards the dead vampires. The process wasn’t instantaneous. For a minute or two, Natalia only looked more and more sunburned, her exposed skin turning from angry pink to blistering crimson to oozing burgundy. Then wisps of smoke drifted from her face and from beneath the sheet as her extremities charred. Dark tendrils shot from the blackened areas to take the rest of her, like cracks that widened into a final and all-consuming, glittering gray.
Ryan wept uncontrollably, his tears splashing across her delicate face as it disintegrated. The sheet that covered her collapsed. Some of the silvery ashes took flight in the morning breeze. Some of them clung to him.
While Étienne coaxed him away from the shifting pile on the sheet and into a lounge chair, Samantha made a strong cup of calming tea. Ryan sipped, but mostly just held it in his lap, untouched, adding tears to the contents. Étienne gathered up the sheet with the ashes and secured it into a tidy package. “I have a lovely bamboo box for her,” Samantha offered.
There was no reaction.
Étienne shepherded Ryan into the house, convincing him to get some rest. By the time he returned, Samantha had poured the ashes into the box. Locking the lid, she placed her hands on the sun-moon, yin-yang design and offered a silent prayer to the universe for Natalia’s soul.
“He is in shock,” Étienne said quietly. “It will take a while for him to recover from this.”
“A long while,” Samantha agreed. Serge hadn’t answered her question earlier, and it wasn’t because he hadn’t heard her. “We should spread out the rest before the lawn crew comes and wonders about them.”
Moving on to actually disposing of bodies—not just hiding them—they worked side-by-side, spreading vampire remains with rakes and sweeping ashed blood from the pavers. Étienne followed her directions, absorbed in thought. Eventually he said, “Would this happen to Dominique, too?”
“Yes. It would.” In fact, it almost had. Now that she had seen the complete process, she realized that she and Cassidy had saved him with only seconds to spare.
“But…he seems so different from these…beings. He looks…normal.”
Samantha paused her sweeping and leaned on the broom with both hands. She had wondered when this question would come up. “You see what he wants you to see. But that isn’t the Dominique I know. Not physically.”
A thoughtful frown wrinkled his brow. “So he is completely like…what I saw here?”
A gusty breeze picked at Samantha’s unraveling braid, and she pinned a long strand of blond hair behind one ear. The sun warmed her face, soothing and safe after the horrors of the morning. “Dominique can be anything he wants to be, but mostly…mostly he is breathtaking.”Like his cousin, she amended to herself when she caught Étienne’s impossibly blue eyes watching her. As though he had read her mind, his melancholy melted like butter in the curl of his sensual mouth.
“As are you,” he said, leaning on his own broom, his words nearly lost in the palm fronds rattling in the breeze above them.
Heat bloomed in her cheeks. Feeling awkward as a teenager, she pushed the broom across the clean floor. “What I am is exhausted.”
“You should be. You charged into a battle like a warrior.”
She swept with more vigor. “Not my brightest move. We could have all died.”
“Would they have spared us if we had tried to hide? Or run?”
She stopped sweeping. Her stomach clenched with the truth. “No. They would have killed everyone here.”
“So you saved Ryan’s life. And perhaps that is what brought Serge out of hiding to save us all.”
“Maybe.”
“You aremagnifique, Samantha. A warrior’s spirit with a pure heart.” He put his broom aside, took hers, put that aside too, then gathered her hands in his and looked down at her upturned face. “I think your clairvoyant friend sees the truth.” His voice dropped lower still. “You have captured my heart.”
She felt herself falling into those sky-blue eyes with no hope of ever surfacing. That fight—if it had ever even been one—she had lost the moment he, armed with nothing but a chair, charged in to protect her against a raging vampire. Somewhere in her chest, something clicked into place, something she had never felt before.
Samantha squeezed his warm hands. “And you have captured mine, Étienne.”
The kiss he bestowed on her was tender enough to steal whatever breath she had left—not from desire, but from the sense of absolute rightness, of connection. At that moment, it was as if they had known each other, not for days, but for decades.
With bashful smiles and long glances, they finished their sweeping before collaborating on a simple breakfast in her small kitchen. They talked as they ate—about immediate events at first, then venturing into their pasts, and suddenly…their future. They were busy plotting her visit to St. Barth when a meditative chime intruded on their growing bliss.
Samantha retrieved her phone from the kitchen counter. “Cassidy,” she answered. “Please tell me there’s good news.”
“Not really. Is Étienne with you?”
She glanced at him. “Yes?”
