Page 84 of Red Masquerade

Adam Vering would never have been able to just hand out a sum that large like it was nothing.

A chill swept through me, a cold breeze raking its fingers through my hair.

Before I could say anything, before I could remark on the chill, Vince shucked off his jacket. “Here,” he said, draping it about my shoulders, dark like a cape.

“Thank you.”

He wrapped his arm around me, pulling me to his side as we walked down the street.

“I needed to take you out properly,” he said, a small smile pulling at his lips. “I wanted to pay this time.”

Though his tone was teasing, I knew he was remembering our past. The meetings at cafes, far on the other side of the city. Stolen kisses in the garden outside my family’s house. His strange appearances on my street, when I’d have to run outside and shoo him away, for fear he’d be seen—and he’d say that all he wanted was a kiss.

The amount of people on the sidewalks was minimal in the late hour, but still substantial, the nightlife in the city still rearing. Almost out of habit, I peeked at them between my lashes. Angling my face downward, lest they recognize me. Watching for any flashes of recognition, I eyed each passerby warily.

But, no, we were too far from my family’s neighborhood. No one here would run and tell on me, reveal to Lucas where I was, who I was with.

Vince said nothing else. I glanced at him, finding his top lip curled just enough. Inspecting each person on his own, but distaste had settled about him instead. A seeming contempt for all the other people around us.

The rich, the aloof, the flappers and their men. Giggling women, clinging to arms. Older couples, noses angled high.

“If you don’t like people, why do you host parties?”

Vince glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. His face relaxed. “What makes you think I don’t like people?”

“Because I knew you,” a slip of the tongue, “Iknowyou. None of your partygoers ever seem to personally know the great Vince Thornton. You’re supposedly absent. No one recognizes you. So why have them?”

He paused. “Because I hoped you’d come one day.”

I nearly faltered in my steps, but kept going. His fingers on mine tightened again.

I knew he’d been waiting for me, knew he was looking for me. And he’d said the house was for me,all of itwas for me.

But it just hadn’t hit me how much he meant those words.

It’s like his spirit had been calling to me in the only way it could. I wasted the days away, jumping from one party to the next, Flora in tow, and somehow, he’d known that he just needed to throw his own to get me back.

“Will you keep hosting them?” I looked up at him, at the way the streetlights accentuated his cheekbones, and caught all the detailed stitching on his clothing.

“Only if you wish it.”

We’d found the driver, parked some blocks away from where we’d dined. When he saw us, he started the vehicle, the engine roaring to life.

Vince opened the door, holding it wide for me.

“What about theotherparties?” I didn’t know how to word it, what exactly to call whatever happened in that room between all those vampires. But Sinclair said they were for feeding, for pleasure, for sharing. Some sort of bloody bacchanal.

For a moment, Vince froze, perhaps not expecting my question.

“I saw it.” He couldn’t be too surprised, too worried. He’d shown me that vampire couple, after all. He’d revealed more about his world, about how he’d been Made, and somehow, I knew the two were related. “What are they?”

His lips pressed into a line. “You will know soon enough.”

Twenty-Nine

My eyes snapped open to the mid-morning sun streaming through the windows. It was quiet, entirely too quiet.

Blinking the sleep away from my eyes, I rolled over to find the bed otherwise empty. The sheets lay tangled and unkempt. Cold to the touch.