Page 11 of Hunted

‘It’s not like that, Lyra,’ he insisted, reaching for me with the same hand that had signed my fate. ‘Valentin Moretti isn’t some alley thug. He’s the most powerful man in New York. Heck, in the whole Western Hemisphere, some say. You’ll live in unspeakable luxury. You’ll be protected.’

‘Protected?’ I remember screaming. ‘From what?’

‘From the world,’ he said. ‘From men worse than him.’

Men worse than him.

That was when I knew he didn’t understand.

Or worse.

That he didn’t care. Not enough to undo the future he’d condemned me to.

Not if the rumours about Valentin Moretti were true.

They travelled differently from other rumours. The kind that surrounded the powerful vampire who ruled both financial and underworld empires didn’t grow louder with repetition. They grew quieter. Sharper. You heard them in fragments, whispered in bone-rattling fear.

That his grip on the city was unyielding.

That he collected debts personally, kept what he claimed until he tired of it. Then a swift death was considered mercy.

Someone once told me he didn’t kill quickly. That he savoured the lesson.

Someone else said women who entered his orbit didn’t leave unchanged. That garnering Don Valentin Moretti’s attention was wishing for death, because even in vampiric bliss, death was always close.

I gathered those whispers like knives before I fled.

And by the time I reached New Orleans, I’d lobbed off my waist-length hair to my jaw with dull hotel scissors, stopped crying and armed myself with real blades.

I tell myself that means I’m stronger.

Maybe it only means I’m learning to survive the beats between torment and fear.

I find Selphine Rousseau by accident.

Or maybe she finds me.

Her shop sits on a narrow street just off Royal, wedged between a tarot reader and a bakery that smells permanently of hot molasses. The front is quaint enough to be overlooked by the less desperate, displaying a hodgepodge of crystals, candles and handmade soaps.

Tourists drift in and quickly drift out.

I go inside because it’s raining, I’m tired, and the air smells a fraction cleaner than the street.

Maître Selphine is behind the counter, skin the colour of old bronze, eyes too sharp to belong to someone her age.

She looks up once. Then goes very still.

‘You’re carrying death,’ she says.

My hand tightens around my coat, torn between affront, bone-deep weariness and the unfortunate acceptance that I can’t slap an old woman for terrible customer service.

‘Everyone is,’ I reply. ‘Eventually.’

She snorts. ‘Not like that.’

I don’t ask what she means. In the past year, I’ve learned not to ask questions I don’t want answered.

She glances past me, and the few lingering customers hightail it to the door.