it back. It was number five, or six, that she’d consumed since realizing Todd had dumped her.
“One more,” she muttered, and veered toward another waiter, her footsteps a bit unsure. “And then I’m going to blow this Popsicle stand.”
“Indigo!”
Dread climbed Indi’s neck at the sound of a familiar and falsely friendly voice. Sabrina Moreau, who hosted this ball, had never met a strand of pearls she didn’t like, or, for that matter, an older married man. She tended to wear both as if battle prizes strung about her neck.
“Bree,” Indi said, while sweeping another goblet of champagne off a passing tray. Her world wobbled, but she ignored the easy drunk that was riding her spine and up the back of her neck.
“That is the most gorgeous dress I’ve seen,” Bree cooed. “One of your creations?”
“Of course. It’s Gucci restyled. Mint green certainly is your color.”
Bree blushed, which only emphasized how terrible the pale green did look on her artificially tanned skin. “Jean-Paul likes me in green. Where’s your date? For as lovely as you look this evening, it can’t be solo. You always have a handsome stunner on your arm.”
“Todd is...” An asshole. And her heart split to even think that she’d thought she could love the guy. Had she thought that? No, not love. Certainly not so fast. But she’d invested a lot of time in him over the past month. “We broke up. And you know me, I’d never miss a ball, especially when I’ve got the dress.”
“Oh, sweetie. That’s so sad.”
Tell her about it. Tightening her lips seemed to keep the tears at bay. Why had she stopped to talk to Bree? She needed to be out of here. Away from the too-happy glow of crystal chandeliers and laughing couples. Now. Someplace dark and quiet so she could lick her wounds.
“How old are you, Indi?”
Indi quirked an eyebrow at that delving question.
“Well, you know what I mean. We’re not getting any younger, are we? Time to wrangle one and get him to put a ring on it. Am I right?” Bree rubbed Indi’s forearm and patted her on the shoulder. “Do you want me to fix you up?”
“No.” Because she was no longer in the market for rich assholes who liked to spend weekends on their yachts while working all hours and making business calls between kisses and—oh, yeah—between orgasms that never quite pleased her. “I’m good, Bree. Really.”
Not really.
Where the hell was the exit?
“Well, if you need—”
Indi’s tolerance level dropped out the bottom of her Swarovski crystal strappy heels. She turned and fled from Bree’s prying questions, suspecting she might look like Cinderella fleeing the ball. It was near midnight. But she couldn’t wear the false smile anymore.
And tears had started to spill without volition.
Aiming down the hallway toward the front doors, she suddenly stopped and spun, thinking an escape out the back would be much easier. The paparazzi always lurked out front. And while she was no A-list celebrity, she didn’t want to risk photobombing any shots with her distraught tear-streaked mug. She could walk down the street and hail a cab.
Weaving through the coat-check area and then down a darkened hallway, she passed a few waiters who informed her she wasn’t authorized to be in this area of the building. Flipping them off, Indi mumbled something about not feeling well and needing to be away from the crowd. Finally, escape loomed ahead.
Pushing the back doors open, she wandered through what must be the loading area. Filing around a parked truck that smelled of diesel fuel, she clutched her skirt so it wouldn’t skim the ground. She’d spent last Saturday afternoon adding the red chiffon poppies to this dress to give color and interest to what had been a crop of beaded green leaves growing up from the hem.
Finally making the cobblestone street, she looked both ways. La rue Joséphine was to the left; that’s where all the cabs would be parked. Yet the promise of bright streetlights and neon revealing her tears to all made her turn to the right.
She’d walk a bit. Even if her heels were much too high for a comfortable stroll and the uneven cobblestones made walking with some decorum a joke. She inhaled deeply, as she thought it would help, but instead, the sudden influx of stale air only increased her tears. And she started to sob. The champagne made her head swim.
Who was she kidding? She was drunk. Which was probably why she hadn’t toppled over yet. The drunkeness was counterbalancing the wobbly-heels-to-ground ratio. Ha!
She wandered by a homeless man sitting on a piece of cardboard. He cast her a wide-eyed look.
“What?” she said testily. “This is Paris. Haven’t you ever seen a woman in a ball gown wandering the streets in the middle of the night?”
She just needed to find a quiet place to break down and bawl. Loud and long. To let the goddess who had been standing at the top of the steps feeling so pretty and special exude the pain of such a sharp and cruel rejection. And then she’d find her way home to curl in on herself.
At the very least, Todd could have texted her before she’d left for the soiree tonight. The bastard!
“Melanie,” she muttered, and wandered forward. The woman sounded high-maintenance. And like she’d go down on a man on the first date.
What was wrong with her? She was a nice person. Reasonably pretty. Not too big and not too thin. She had always agreed to whatever Todd wanted to do. She ate at the restaurants he’d chosen, and she even wore the tight red dress that pushed up her tits to her throat when he’d asked her to. What had she done wrong?
“Wasn’t I good enough for him?”
Tears spilled down her cheeks. Indi pushed forward, wandering mindlessly, then turned down another, narrower street. She knew this neighborhood from girls’ nights out with her BFF. Maybe?
Pausing, she thrust out her arms to balance as her heel wobbled in a crack between cobblestones. Where in Paris was she?
“Who cares?”
Unable to fight the call to release her hurt, Indi released her tears, loudly.
* * *
Ryland James stood in the center of a dark, quiet street in FaeryTown. The sword he held in his right hand curved like a scimitar, and was bespelled to kill faeries. He’d found it in a tree years ago, guarded by a dryad, and had claimed it as his own. Of late, Sidhe Slayer was the whispered title he’d been hearing about himself.
He didn’t need a label. Someone had to stop the collectors who snuck in at midnight from Faery through this, a thin place insinuating FaeryTown. It was smack-dab in the middle of the eighteenth arrondissement of Paris. The collectors arrived in pairs and, if they could get past him, would seek the first human they could find and assume control of that person’s body, then steal a human baby and take it back to Faery.
Not on his guard.
Checking his watch, he noted four minutes until
