Page 109 of Hellbound

“I’m positively famished,” the traveler drawled in the best Continental accent Marian had ever heard. “Won’t you promenade with me that I might partake of the nibbles and purchase an art? You promised me a Van Goff to hang over Comrade Lenin’s litter box.”

Barry Pacheco and his wife looked aghast at the short Black woman hanging off her arm. Tori looked up at Marian with doe eyes and batted her false lashes.

“Who’s this?” Barry asked.

What are you afraid of? What more can they do to hurt you?

Marian had hit whatever was below rock bottom. She’d phased through it and found something worse. Now she was the pawn of an inter-dimensional monster. And it wasn’t like they could kill her. Nothing could.

She pulled Tori close and planted a kiss on the traveler’s cheek. Tori erupted in giggles.

“This is my wife, Circe. Circe—honey, sweetie—I’ll meet you outside, then I’ll buy you something expensive.”

Tori giggled as she rose up on her toes to kiss Marian’s jaw. “My love. I can’t wait to make out with you.”

With a dramatic twirl of her skirt, the traveler hurried down the hall, leaving Marian with the horror-struck couple.

Marian leveled them with a chilly stare. “Barry Pacheco, right? The king of frivolous lawsuits?”

Two distinct veins bulged in Barry’s neck. His face turned a cherry red that clashed terribly with his forest green suit.

“You have a lot of nerve showing up here. I’ll tell your stepfather—”

“That he should sue me again? For what, being alive and a little gay? Good luck with that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go make out with my smoking hot wife.”

There was no time for revenge of any significance. Marian had to leave. But she’d be damned if she didn’t savor the looks on the Pachecos’ faces when Tori kissed her.

She was almost to the hallway when she recognized a head of snow-white hair in front of her. The crowd shifted to her right, and just as the urge to vomit nearly overcame her, a familiar face emerged from the sea of socialites. A regular guest star in her nightmares, and the man who’d damned her.

Daniel Eaves stood barely ten feet away, laughing at whatever Stellan Blacke had just uttered to him.

Marian’s mind short-circuited. She couldn’t process her stepfather’s presence, much less the fact that his body language conveyed familiarity and comfort with Stellan.

The roaring wave of unwanted memories surged behind her as Marian stood there, too stunned and quaking to hear whatever cruel parting words the Pachecos had for her. Marian was too small, too powerless, too overcome with fear of her stepfather to do anything but fall.

Until a strong arm banded around her waist and took her hand in his.

Vale appeared like a vision in black, enveloping her in his shadows. Delicate gold chain draped between the lapels of his suit. It all happened so quickly; he pressed her hand to his chest. Then they were spinning, and Marian couldn’t look away from him. A tower of a man whose usual dark, understated style had been accented by gold.

Her lungs filled with woodsmoke and ozone as the Getty blurred around her, the warm fall decor in the background bleeding together as Vale dragged her into the open, where couples danced to distant, reedy music. Then, through no power of her own, she was gliding along with Vale. Dancing.

“Vale,” Marian wheezed, splaying a hand against the plush velvet brocade of his waistcoat.

He ducked his head and spoke low, his breath a soft heat against the shell of her ear. “Follow my lead. Look at me and breathe.”

Marian swiveled her head as Vale spun them with preternatural grace. Where was Daniel? And Stellan? She couldn’t see them anymore.

Only then did she clock the dark melody weaving through the crowd. Vale pressed her close, melding her body to his as he kept time for them both.

“Breathe.” Vale’s voice wrapped around her, full and dark like the black velvet beneath her fingertips. “His power is your fear, Marian. Don’t give it to him.”

“It’s not Stellan,” she stammered. “It’s—”

“I know,” Vale murmured said with absolutely certainty as he guided them through the chorus. The string section swelled as the flutes sang sweetly.

How could Vale know? Marian hadn’t told him a damn thing about her stepfather, or the hell he’d made of her life.

“What’s going on? Why are they here?”