then glanced guiltily at Nadine.
“Wh—who?”
Nadine smiled, obviously not believing Wilhelmina’s attempt to sound unaware of who she referred to.
“Our employer,” Nadine clarified anyway. “The one you were eyeing as if he were good enough to eat.”
“I was not.” Wilhelmina frowned. That was ludicrous.
Again Nadine didn’t seem convinced. Her smile widened further, her teeth gleaming white against her lovely, dark skin.
“I will have to introduce you.” She glanced to where he danced with the lovely blonde. “Later, though. I’d say he’s busy for the night. You know, after being away.”
Wilhelmina glanced back, too. Another woman joined them on the dance floor, her hands slipping around him from behind so he was sandwiched between the two women.
“Very busy,” Nadine said, with a wry, yet almost fond chuckle. She began to place drinks on Wilhelmina’s tray.
Wilhelmina watched the antics of the dancing threesome for a moment longer, then determinedly picked up the tray.
So she’d finally seen the Sebastian Young. She knew she would eventually, and she wasn’t going to be shaken by his presence. The goal was to stay focused on why she was here. Why she had picked this nightclub and this vampire. Sebastian Young disgusted her. He was everything she despised in a vampire.
And she planned to destroy him.
Chapter 2
Wilhelmina delivered her tray of drinks before slipping into the backroom. Given what she intended to do, it seemed a little silly to worry about the patrons getting their cocktails. But she needed to appear like a good employee. She couldn’t afford to get fired. If this attempt didn’t work, she still needed to stay here. For her sabotage to work, she had to have access to the internal workings of Carfax Abbey.
Carfax Abbey. Even the name of the club was pompous. The lair of the world’s most legendary vampire. Did Sebastian consider himself as legendary? From all that she had heard about him, she didn’t doubt it. The Society said his hunger was insatiable. He was a real threat.
She crept farther into the storage room, pausing occasionally to listen. She couldn’t hear anyone near, but she knew she would still have to act quickly. She looked up at the ceiling. Every six feet or so, a silver sprinkler head jutted down from the drywall.
She headed to the back of the room, where a large metal barrel was used to store recycling. Carefully, she lifted the barrel and positioned it under one of the sprinklers. Then she scurried back to where she’d stashed some broken-down beer boxes and other cardboard behind cases of liquor. She placed it in the metal drum and rummaged through her pocket for a small box of matches.
Sliding it open, she paused, staring at the matches, the head of each matchstick red like droplets of blood in her hand.
What was she doing? She couldn’t go through with this. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. She just wanted to protect the humans who naively came here thinking the club was nothing more than a happening nightspot.
But maybe this wasn’t the way to do it.
She closed the box and started to slip it back into her dress, when the graphic on the front caught her attention. Carfax Abbey scrawled in raised red lettering like swirls of blood across the cover.
She thought of Sebastian and all the things she’d heard about him. His misuse of mortal women. His insatiable hunger. His arrogance.
She opened the matches again. She was doing the right thing. For the right reasons. Sebastian Young needed to be stopped.
She swiped the match across the striker. It flared, and before she could think better of it, she held the flame to the cardboard in the barrel. The thick paper was surprisingly slow to ignite. And surprisingly smoky, too. But eventually it began to burn in earnest.
She stepped back, watching and hoping the sprinkler above the feeble blaze got hot enough before the smoke set off the fire alarms. A smoke alarm would just delay the vampires’ amusement for the night. She wanted a real interruption. Gushing water and the damage created by the deluge was bound to suspend the nightclub’s nefarious activities for quite a while.
Wilhelmina crept over to the door and checked to make sure no one was coming because of the smell. The smoke had become thick enough for humans to smell, never mind someone with preternatural senses. But from what she could see from her limited angle, everyone was still busy drinking and dancing and socializing.
A loud pop drew her attention back to the fire. She hurried to the metal barrel. Flames rose high above the top of the drum, but it was still well contained. Thankfully. She wanted the nightclub closed; she didn’t want it burned to the ground. Nadine had told her that Sebastian, his brother and his brother’s wife lived above the club. Her intent wasn’t to hurt them.
She could feel the heat of the burning cardboard now, and the smoke had lessened. All she had to do was wait.
She didn’t have to wait long. Within a few seconds, the sprinkler over the barrel began to spray an umbrella of water.
Joyful laughter bubbled up inside of her. This time, she’d done it. She’d saved the mortals at the club. They wouldn’t experience the brutal bloodlust of a vampire. Not tonight.
She listened, expecting to hear the squeals of the patrons as water poured down on them. The abrupt silence of the dance music. The pounding of hundreds of feet racing for the exit, but she heard none of that.
Instead she heard a sharp, irritated voice demand, “What the hell is going on?”
Wilhelmina spun around, her high heels slipping in the water that had begun to pool around her feet. Before she could catch herself, she fell flat onto her bottom in the puddle, the sprinkler showering cold water down over her.
Sebastian stared at the soaked woman seated in a growing pool of water. Not exactly how he’d imagined a woman falling at his feet tonight. And frankly, he wasn’t too thrilled to be pulled away from the women he had been expecting to fall at his feet. But when he’d gone to the bar to order another round of drinks, he’d smelled smoke. He’d followed the scent to this—odd scene. His new waitress on the floor, drenched, near a smoldering recycling barrel.
“What the hell happened here?”
The vampiress—Wilhelmina—braced her hands on the floor and started to lever herself up. Sebastian reached forward to help her, but she jerked her arm out of his hold. The movement caused her feet to slip out from under her again, and she returned to the puddle with a loud plop.
“Are you all right?” he asked, crouching down so he was at eye level with her.
She peered at him through water-splattered glasses and a tangle of wet, black hair that had escaped her interesting hairstyle. The two knots on the top of her head, which had looked a bit like horns, now drooped and looked more like floppy dog ears.
Sebastian would have smiled at the image she created, if he hadn’t let his gaze drop from her bedraggled hair to her body. The silky brocade of her uniform adhered to her figure, revealing every slope and curve. The hemline, already
