She nodded and smiled sweetly. Stepping back, she deftly navigated through the fallen men over to the backpack she’d dropped by the wall. She picked it up and hooked it over a shoulder. Kaz watched her, his lips parted, his eyes following her every move.
“I...” she began. A sweet smile struggled with uncertainty. She raked her fingers through her loose sweep of hair. “Suddenly, I don’t know how to walk away from you.” Her brows pulled together as she wondered about that confession.
The statement reached in and clutched Kaz’s gut. It was so intimate. She didn’t want to walk away? He could get behind that sentiment. He’d like to wrap her in his arms and take her home with him and leave the world behind. Unfortunately, the real world had begun to groan near his feet.
“Just put one foot in front of the other,” he said, regretting the dire need to send her off.
The woman chuckled and touched her lips, as if testing to see if his warmth was still there. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Kaspar Rothstein.” He walked around the circle of vampires starting to come to. “Kaz to friends and those I tend to kiss. And you?”
“Zoë. Uh, Zoë to friends and those who tend to kiss me.”
At that moment, he fell, right into her stunning blue eyes and lush pink smile. Once again, his life had changed.
“Where do you live, Zoë? In case I feel the calling to beat up a second pack of idiots in order to claim another kiss from you.”
She smiled at the suggestion.
Kaz really did know about this one. Mine.
“Down the street.” She pointed in the direction she was headed. “Cerulean door. Can’t miss it. But don’t follow me. You’ve already been granted spoils this night for your heroic act.”
“As my lady wishes.” He bowed grandly, sweeping out an arm as if a knight genuflecting before his mistress.
Yeah, so he had his goofy moments.
The broad grin curling her lips matched his own as Zoë turned and strolled away, casting a look back over her shoulder.
She walked with a sensuous sway to her hips that he could imagine shifting side to side between his roaming hands as he danced with her. Kaz learned a lot about a person when dancing with them. It was safe, too, when surrounded by others on the dance floor and not all alone. Alone was fine, but only after he got to know the girl. Which, unfortunately, happened rarely due to his job. Ash in his hair and bloody stakes littering his apartment tended to turn them off.
A few groans alerted Kaz. He tugged out a stake with his right hand, and reached for another with his left—missing. He patted his hip where the stake was holstered—
No stake? He swung his gaze about, sweeping the tarmac, even as the first vampire rose to his feet. Had it fallen out when he’d been fighting? Had one of the vamps grabbed if off him?
The only one who had been close enough...
“Is that so?”
He chuckled and swung toward the vampire, a direct hit dusting the air with a fog of dark vamp ash. Before the other two could even rise, Kaz jumped over each one, planted the stake over their heart and finished them in succession. Four kills.
“But no closer to the prize,” he muttered. For he was on a specific mission that required he locate a one-fanged vampire who had murdered innocents.
A glance down the street didn’t spy Zoë. Kaz patted his back pocket, ensuring his wallet was still there.
“Interesting.”
She hadn’t gone for the cash, but instead for the one thing he should never allow to fall into the hands of the uninitiated. She’d called him her rescuing knight? The woman had no idea she’d gotten his title correct.
And the distraction of that kiss wasn’t putting him any closer to the vamp he needed to get his hands on. He hadn’t much to go on, but how many one-fanged vampires could there be in Paris?
Once he found the culprit, he needed to go deeper, to the source behind the vampire’s attack. Someone was trafficking in a dangerously addictive substance in the city of Paris. Similar to faery dust but more like faery dust times ten. Humans were not safe from the addicted vampires who went after them.
“I will put a stop to it,” he muttered, and strode down the street in Zoë’s wake. “First I need to get that stake back. But not until I figure out what cerulean is.”
* * *
Sid sat on the marble worktable, his big green eyes intent on every move Zoë made beneath the glass cupola capping her little tower in the sky. Purrs filled the room; the cat’s resonance harmonized with Zoë’s work.
The seventeenth-century mansion she lived in was narrow, yet high, soaring three stories. The third-floor tower room had confirmed her decision to buy the place five years ago. Perfect for a spell room. The curved, paned-glass roof let in the moonlight and opened the room to receive from the elements of air, earth and water.
She practiced all elemental magic, save for fire, a witch’s worst enemy. Though some witches were talented with fire magic, Zoë had decided to focus on a more powerful magic that could alter the molecules of any object, even living, breathing flesh. Such magic was her father’s specialty, and he’d taught her the basics before he’d had to go into hiding a decade earlier.
Because of his chosen study, the witches of the Light had declared her father, Pierre Guillebeaux, warlock. The Light did not approve of molecular magic. Witches must not alter living beings in any way beyond using magic to speed up the body’s natural healing process. Only shapeshifters and demons were sanctioned to physically alter their bodies. But Zoë’s father believed in the healing capabilities of his magic—that someone could heal himself or herself or otherwise alter their very being—something no witch was able to do. Instead of sacrificing the study of it, he had willingly become warlock.
She missed him. Though she hadn’t seen him in ten years, she knew, wherever he was, he was well, yet that didn’t dispel the emptiness in her heart. Since her mother’s death when she was thirteen, her father was her only family, and though she had many friends, she craved an intimate relationship.
In the center of her spell room, before the round, marble-topped worktable, she carefully went about the process of alchemizing the faery ichor that was delivered once a week from an unnamed, but obnoxious source. Zoë didn’t have to like the delivery girl; she just had to take the ichor and in return hand over the finished product. It was a smooth system that had been working for the few weeks she’d been engaged in this endeavor.
The vampire Mauritius, leader of tribe Anière, had been buying her blend to distribute to his fellow vampires. He had seemed eager to spread it around, assuring her it would do well within the vampire community. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her blend—which was to be expected in this neighborhood that overlapped FaeryTown—so Zoë was kept fairly busy producing the concoction.
But it must be fresh, and only produced in small amounts. That ensured efficacy. The shelf life was about a week, she figured, though she hadn’t done field experiments to verify that, and had only her best friend’s usage report to judge how well it actually worked.
“I
